


Surrogate

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-31
Updated: 2004-07-31
Packaged: 2019-02-05 17:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: In the wake of Kirk's death, Spock and Claire begin to ...





	Surrogate

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

Series: TOS A/U - "Trefoil" Series 

 

Comments: In terms of sequence, this story fits into the middle of my Trefoil story "Home From the Hill." 

 

 

Claire clutched her pillow, rested her forehead on her crossed arms, and tried not to think about the pain. Spock had never before failed to ask permission for this most intimate of invasions - permission that she always had given willingly. The few times in the past that they had performed this particular act, he had always been gentle with her, caressing and stretching until she was ready to accept him without discomfort. This time, he had simply turned her onto her stomach and taken her, with no warning or preparation. The carelessness of it, the obliviousness to her needs, was completely unlike him. His breath was harsh as he thrust insistently into her. Her anus throbbed and burned, and she wondered distantly if she was torn, if she bled. 

 

Then, in the midst of it, with no warning, his erection simply wilted and he pulled out of her and turned over onto his back without a word, staring up at the ceiling with a stony gaze. 

 

Claire slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom to clean up. She turned the water in the shower to hot and stepped in, letting the steam engulf her. She stood, the spray pounding on her back and neck as she leaned against the shower wall, and thought that what had just happened was in some strange way a fitting end to a day that had been horrible from first to last - the day of Jim's funeral. 

 

She had found it very nearly unbearable. If Sulu had not taken charge and found a quiet room for them, away from the Starfleet brass and Federation dignitaries and newscams and assorted hangers-on, she didn't know what she would have done. Sulu had quietly and efficiently emptied the small chapel, ushered them all inside, and snagged a loitering lieutenant to stand guard, with warnings of dire consequences should anyone breach the fortifications. So there they gathered, she and Spock and their various family members, and McCoy, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov too (Scotty and Chapel having been unable to leave their postings to attend), and held the simple service that Jim had wanted all along. And then they went out and sat through the official ceremonies. 

 

Afterwards, family and friends had returned to the house, and they'd had a meal together and spent some time in pockets of quiet conversation before, one by one, they departed. And she and Spock were alone in the house, for the first time since before Jim's death. 

 

Spock had gone to the garden to meditate, and she had wandered about, cleaning up glasses and plates left by their guests, plumping pillows, picking dying blooms out of the vases of cut flowers. The rituals of death hadn't changed much in the last three hundred years, she had thought. People still brought food, sent flowers. They still said "I'm so sorry" in hushed tones. They stayed close in an attempt to stave off the grief. But eventually they had to return to their own lives. Eventually, those who mourned had to confront their loss. 

 

Through it all, Spock had been . . . Spock. Calm. Controlled. Gracious, if cool, with the many people who had insisted on expressing their condolences. She had seen no outward sign of grief, nor of the rage that she had glimpsed in him the night of Jim's death. It was very Vulcan of him, she supposed, in a public setting at least. Was she being made now to pay the price of that control? 

 

They had both been tired, and had gone to bed early. And then sometime in the middle of the night, she'd awakened to Spock's hands on her body. She had welcomed the intimacy - it had been a long time - but it quickly had become apparent that Spock was not himself. And so she had found herself face down on the bed, trying not to think of what was happening to her as a violation. 

 

Claire toweled off and slipped into an old shirt that had been hanging on a hook beside the bathroom door. Jim's shirt, one of his favorites, the soft fawn-colored flannel nearly worn through in places. It still smelled faintly of his soap and his own distinctive male scent. She wrapped it closely around her and buried her face in the fabric, inhaling deeply and letting the memories wash over her. *Oh, Jim. If you were here, you'd know what to do. You'd know how to help us.* She recognized immediately the absurdity of her wish. If Jim were here, they would not need any help. 

 

She brought a warm, damp cloth back to the bedroom and washed Spock gently. He took no outward notice of her ministrations. She climbed back into bed beside him. He was rigid and silent beside her. 

 

"I don't understand what went on just now," she said. 

 

She couldn't see his face, which he had turned away from her, but shame was written in each line of his body. 

 

"I hurt you." 

 

Not a time to lie. "Yes." 

 

"I ask forgiveness." 

 

"Of course I forgive you, Spock. You didn't mean to hurt me. I'm all right now." 

 

She spoke automatically, without any real warmth, saying what she thought she should. Perhaps that was why her words did not seem to afford him any comfort. "I have behaved unpardonably. I have used you ... as if you were he." 

 

He spoke with a careful formality that he had not shown her in years. Time to be equally careful with her own words now. Strip them of the emotional content, maintain a certain distance, just as he had. "We have engaged in that particular practice before. Were those other times unpardonable?" 

 

"No." 

 

Holding her away with his actions and his tone, but in that one neutral word, so much emotion creeping in, unbidden - the wrong kind of emotion for Spock. It hinted of a world of misery underneath. 

 

"Did I ask you to stop?" 

 

"No." 

 

"Would you have stopped, if I had asked you to?" 

 

"Yes." 

 

Not that, then. Not that he felt out of control. So if it wasn't the act itself . . . he had said, 'I have used you as if you were he.' Maybe-? 

 

"Spock, were you thinking of Jim?" 

 

He flinched, and in a rush, she understood. 'I have used you as if you were he.' The words echoed in her head. He was not just thinking of Jim, but treating her and her body as a surrogate for his, shunning the female in favor of a part of her that he could pretend was Jim's. 

 

She struggled to grasp the implications. 

 

"You miss him. Your body misses him." 

 

"Yes," he whispered. "Very much." And a feeling of inadequacy overwhelmed her. How could she hope to give him what he wanted? She hadn't the right equipment, after all. Would he ever again want her for what she could provide? 

 

He didn't move, but she felt him pull even further away. It would have been unbearable if she did not believe that his rejection was not of her, but of the comfort he didn't believe he deserved. By his standards he'd wronged her, and her feeble insistence that he had done nothing wrong would not likely make him change his mind. She couldn't let him withdraw. She wouldn't let him build those Vulcan walls now, especially not now. 

 

"There's nothing wrong with fantasizing about Jim when you make love to me." She did her best to speak with conviction. 

 

In his silence, a spurning of her absolution. 

 

"I understand what you might need to do, the ways you might need to touch me, to make my body feel more like his. If that's what you need - whatever you need, Spock - I offer it freely to you." 

 

"Why?" 

 

"Because I love you." Love you enough to do even that. 

 

And as if that declaration was too much for him to hear, as if he felt undeserving of it, he rolled away from her, began to get up. 

 

Desperation made Claire harsh. "Don't run away, Spock. It's cowardly." 

 

He sagged back, still turned away from her, and suddenly Claire was angry. "I love you, damnit, and I love him, and all those months - those years - I spent here by myself, all those nights of dinners for one and empty beds, and I never felt as alone and - useless - as I do this minute." She swiped furiously at her eyes. "I love you, and I love him, and I loved the two of you together. You're - you were - a different person with him, and he was a different person with you. It's like there was Jim, and there was Spock, and there was Jim-and-Spock. A third entity. And Jim-and-Spock is gone. I miss Jim-and-Spock. And I know it's 

nothing compared to the way you must miss it." 

 

"I also miss Jim-and-Claire," Spock said softly. 

 

She had not expected that and, hearing it, she wasn't angry any more. "Yes," she said sadly. "I know." Because there was no denying it - she was a different person with Jim too. And though she was afraid of the answer, she asked the question. "Is Spock-and- Claire gone too?" 

 

The silence went on so long that she thought she would scream. "It would be illogical to think that there will be no changes," he said finally, and she felt an icy numbness. *So that's it. We're finished.* 

 

Then he reached a hand back to her, and she felt a tiny spark of hope. She put her hand in his, and he drew it along his side, over his heart, as if to bind that organ within his body. "I am afraid," he said, very softly. 

 

"Oh, Spock." And through their link she could feel that it was so. "What is it that you fear?" 

 

"I do not know . . . if what we have will be enough." 

 

It was her deepest fear as well. They had built their lives as three. There was a particular strength and balance in that, though most people would have considered it impossibly complicated. As three, they had been complete. Could she and Spock learn to be complete as two? Could they ever fill, in even the smallest way, the void that Jim's death had left in their lives? 

 

They lay together like that for a long time, his words hanging heavy over them, and Claire thought about everything they both would be missing, without Jim. And because that subject seemed much too vast for her to comprehend at this moment - and since, after all, they were in bed, and naked - she considered the ways in which his death would affect their sex life. 

 

There was no getting around it, she realized. With Jim's death, Spock had lost something that she had not - the opportunity to express his sexuality with a member of his own gender. To be taken, penetrated, dominated. Not always, but sometimes, to play the submissive role. She couldn't hope to match Jim's strength, and it was not really in her nature to try to dominate, but maybe this once - 

 

She moved her arm then and grasped Spock's limp organ firmly at the root, trying to replicate Jim's firmer touch. He murmured in quiet protest and tried to move away. She held him fast and he didn't fight her but he was unyielding, wary. 

 

With her free hand she reached behind her to the bedside table for the lubricant. She did not want to release Spock, so one-handedly she flipped the top off the tube, squeezed a large quantity onto the sheet and then rolled her hand in it. 

 

She had never penetrated Spock before. It had always been Jim who had pleasured him in this way. But she had watched them often enough, and she knew what to do. She stroked down his length and rubbed her palm over his glans as with her other hand she massaged his perineum and anus and then dipped two slick fingers into him. 

 

He gasped, and trembled, and was instantly hard. "No," he said in a strangled voice tinged with panic. 

 

She stilled both her hands, but did not withdraw. "Please let me. I'm not Jim. I can't be what he was. I can't do everything he did. But I can do this. Please, Spock, I want to." I want to do it because you need it, she added silently. "Think of him," she said. "It's all right. Tell him what you want." 

 

Spock was panting as hard as if he had run a marathon. Claire began rubbing again, gently, as she probed deeper into him. Spock took a deep, shuddering breath and dug both hands into the mattress, taking up two fistfuls of sheet and holding on tightly. Then, slowly, tentatively, he began to move, forward into her hand and back against her fingers. "More," he said. 

 

She added a third finger, and he moaned and pressed backwards. "More," he said again, raising his upper leg and moving her hand away from his swollen organ onto the heavy sac beneath. 

 

Her hand was small and slender. Not much bigger or longer than Jim's cock, she thought, as she carefully and slowly eased all five digits into him. As she met resistance, she withdrew slightly and then pushed forward, as she had seen Jim do with his cock, simultaneously firm and gentle, and presently she was encased to her wrist. 

 

Spock groaned, and Claire raised her head to look over his shoulder at his face. His eyes were closed tightly and his face reflected mental agony and physical ecstasy in equal measure, asceticism and hedonism at war within him. She felt his core heat, and the involuntary, rhythmic contractions of his bowels, and the voluntary squeeze and release of his sphincters. She withdrew her hand halfway, slowly, then returned it, once, twice, Spock groaning each time. 

 

"Again," he said. "Please, again," the words forced from him unwillingly, even as he tried to control the reactions of his body. She turned her hand slightly, feeling a knuckle brush against a harder spot in the soft tissue, and he let out a sharp cry and squirmed against her. But still he resisted, every muscle rock-hard, still ashamed of his need. 

 

It reminded her of the early stages of pon farr, when Spock would still be aware enough to fear his loss of control. She and Jim had learned to hold him closely then, to swaddle him with their bodies as one would swaddle an infant with a blanket, restraining him gently but insistently. In that close confinement, he felt safe and could yield to the demands of the fever. 

 

Remembering that, she brought her leg around his hip, pinning him to the bed. With his superior strength, he could fling her off in an instant, but she knew he wouldn't. She brought her free arm around his biceps and chest and held him hard. "Let it go," Claire whispered. "It's all right. We've got you. Let it go." 

 

A long moment, in which neither of them drew breath. And then, all at once, she felt him yield. She moved her hand within him once more, and he was coming, crying out Jim's name. 

 

And with the physical release came the emotional one. Claire had known that Vulcans can cry, do cry in situations of extreme distress. She knew that Spock had cried before - Jim had told her about the quiet tears he had shed for Vejur. But nothing could have prepared her for the harsh, dry sobs that shook him now. They frightened her with their intensity. 

 

It was said that Klingons howled their sorrow upon the death of a mate. Well, the Klingons had nothing on Vulcans for expressions of grief, she thought, as Spock's shields crumbled and she tumbled into the maelstrom of his loss. Vulcan control is like a dam, she thought. When it bursts, there's destruction all around. 

 

Spock turned onto his stomach, his forehead pressed to the pillow beneath him, his shoulders heaving. She carefully eased her hand out of him and wiped it clean with the damp cloth she had used earlier on him, then wrapped herself as tightly around him as she could. She held him as he shook, listening to him make sounds that she had never heard before and hoped desperately never to hear again. His desolation was fathomless, and he had so little experience with this kind of grief. 

 

Slowly, slowly, he wound down, until finally there was silence. He pulled his tattered shields back together and settled them gently in place, not to shut her out but to give them both the comfort of a little mental distance. Claire dared then to ease her body to one side and pull the blankets around them. She pulled him back into her arms and he came willingly, his body trembling with exhaustion. 

 

"I am sorry," he whispered, his cheek laid on the soft fabric of Jim's shirt, the soft pillow of her breast. 

 

"Nothing to be sorry about," she said, her own cheek resting on his head. "It was a long time coming. I didn't know . . ." 

 

"Know what?" 

 

"If you ever would. If you ever could." 

 

"Cry for him?" 

 

"Yes." 

 

"It was something I did not know myself." 

 

"It's an important part of healing. For humans, anyway." 

 

"For Vulcans too, I think." 

 

"Remember where we are. Anything goes here, in this bed. That's always been our rule." 

 

"Yes," he said, gently stroking her flank. "It has always worked well for us." 

 

"Spock." 

 

"Yes." 

 

"I love you. And I know it changes nothing. What we have might still not be enough for you. Or for me." 

 

"If it is not, then it is not. However, I prefer to believe in a positive outcome." 

 

Her heart surged. "Do you know the meaning of the word 'faith,' Spock?" 

 

"Of course. Faith is belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." 

 

"You've just said that you have faith. In us." 

 

"Yes. It is something that you taught me." 

 

"I did?" 

 

"Yes." He was silent for a moment. "There is something I have not said, something that is important for me to say." He shifted his position to look into her eyes. "I love you, Claire. Whatever happens, I do not want you to doubt that." 

 

"I've never doubted it, my love." And their eyes met as they both remembered the last time she had said those words - to Jim, on the night of his death. Her own tears came then, and it was Spock's turn to hold her, comforting her with the warmth of his body and his caresses. 

 

And though they both were exhausted, or perhaps because of it, they made love with a rare tenderness and passion, each wanting only the other. When they were finished, they settled back together in a cocoon of blankets, in the bed where, somehow, the universe always seemed to right itself. 

 

Then they slept, a deep and restful sleep, and did not dream.


End file.
